X.Org vs. Wayland Linux Gaming Performance For NVIDIA GeForce + AMD Radeon In Early 2023

First up was the Cyberpunk 2077 game running on Linux by way of Steam Play. The Radeon graphics card had an ever so subtle advantage with the GNOME 43 Wayland session while the NVIDIA graphics card at 4K saw a few frame advantage with the GNOME X.Org session, but in any event was a tight race and to a gamer would likely not notice any performance difference for this particular Windows game whether you are using an X.Org or Wayland desktop.

With DiRT Rally 2.0 ended up being a big surprise... The X.Org session was performing much faster than the Wayland session. With the Radeon GPU it was an extremely big difference while in the NVIDIA case still quite significant too. DiRT Rally 2.0 runs on Linux via Steam Play and here when running under XWayland seems to have a big performance penalty. This does seem to explain some odd DiRT Rally 2.0 benchmark results from in the past when the racing game's performance seemed rather CPU limited in stock testing on Ubuntu where by default with Radeon graphics it defaults to the Wayland session. This DiRT Rally 2.0 performance difference was the most extreme issue seen from any of the X.Org vs. (X)Wayland Linux game testing this round.

With the F1 22 racing game, also running on Linux via Steam Play, there was similar performance between the GNOME Wayland and X.Org sessions on the Radeon side while with the NVIDIA graphics it was exhibiting better performance under the classic X.Org session.